August 31, 2004

zucchini story

Once upon a time there was a very kind and busy woman (my mother) who had a little garden behind her house, and in this garden there was an ambitious zucchini plant that produced many large zucchinis. One of these zucchinis managed to grow to a couple feet long before being discovered and was kindly offered to her daughter at the end of a weekend of abundance in garage sale-ing. The daughter accepted the zucchini, not knowing what she was going to do with it, but trusting that something good would come of it. She took it home and it sat on her kitchen counter looking very large and very green every time she passed it. Finally she decided to do some research and found some big zucchini recipes on the internet and got cooking. As she realized how much food was going to come out of this one vegetable, she started thinking she was going to need some help eating it, and asked her husband to invite friends and neighbors over. She started feeling rather festive as the challenge of cooking this thing took over the kitchen and good smells started coming from the oven. Everyone enjoyed a very zucchini meal and stayed up late playing games and enjoying a little company. Some angel even came over to clean the kitchen! The daughter and her husband found this the most satisfying sort of evening to have.

Maya lugging the beast

Maya and Georgia with zucchini pancakes (not a success) and stuffed zucchini (better)

August 30, 2004

garage sale!

After being avid garage sale shoppers for years, Billy and I got to be at the other end of one, but without all the work. It was the best of both worlds helping out at my mom and sister's garage sale this weekend. I was so pumped I could hardly sleep the night before, and it fulfilled all my expectations. There was a slow but steady stream of all kinds of different people and we just sat back, enjoying meeting and smiling at people and trying to be laid back but helpful sales people. I had such a good time doing a big project with my family. We brought some of our junk to add to their beautiful things, and we sold some of it- mostly the big stuff- hooray! Less stuff in the basement! Their neighbors all came over and shopped and talked and hung out too, including all the kids, so it was a great community event. Cousin Lucy runs with a group of kids in the neighborhood that are pretty much all older than her but she leads as often as the others. It was great for Georgia to join them and be in a group like that- we don't really have that here, especially with this busy street in front of us- nobody lets their kids run around in the front yard here. But these kids are being raised in a cul-de-sac and they are all over the street and back and forth to all the kids' houses. It's pretty cute. Amazing how traffic patterns can affect the social situation.

The drive went ok, but I can tell that I'm not going to want to go on any long car trips while I'm pregnant because it's irritating to my tummy (I get car sick easier) and I was having little contractions all the time.

August 25, 2004

first day of school

Georgia's first day back at Montessori school was Monday and she was fine with that and actually so excited that she woke up before anyone else and got herself dressed and ready to go half an hour early. I needn't have worried about her adjusting to school in the morning; she's suddenly a morning person. And when I picked her up afterwards, she was happy about her class, even with some people being different from last year and the room being rearranged. She took it all in stride and was singing songs she had learned (over and over all day). So with all this good stuff, I thought I was ok with her being back in school, and seemed to feel fine, but there must have been something for me to resolve because I had a frightening nightmare that night about Georgia. She was playing too close to the edge of a third floor balcony that had no railing and just as I was warning her of the danger, she fell all the way down and when I got to her I found she had fallen on her head, but she didn't look too bad at first and as much as I was screaming for help, nobody was acting like there was a problem, and were glaring at me like I was a nuisance and walking REALLY slow getting me ice. And then I looked at her again and she had gotten much worse and I knew she was going to die and I couldn't get anyone to call an ambulance. They just stared at me uncomprehending and a little irritated at being bothered. Then I woke up indescribably scared and I had to go stay with Georgia in her bunk bed after that to make sure she was really ok. I'd like to say I slept well after that, knowing she was alive and well, but it didn't happen. It left me feeling unsettled and unresolved. Where did those big scary feelings come from and was there any warning to it or was it just a release of the fears of sending your child off into the unknown of other peoples' care? I'm paying attention to that and trying to learn whatever is there to be learned but trying not to be paranoid of every conceivable danger (and balcony). I don't know how literally to take it but I feel sort of shaken up. Which always gets me thinking differently about life. Hence...

Georgia starting school also made me start thinking about what she's going to do next year when she's old enough for kindergarten and what our choices are if we decide not to go with the Montessori one. I started doing some more reading online about homeschooling and came across this great thing called a Certificate of Empowerment that a homeschooling mother wrote. Here's the link so you can officially be empowered in your own education (just change the language from 'your kids' to 'yourself')- I think most of us could use a little more empowerment in our quests for learning. There seem to be different types of homeschooling out there and the one I was reading about was 'unschooling' which I don't think I can define yet, but seems to be sort of free form, non-curriculum, following childrens' interests and lead to some extent. I found a good reading list in an essay called 'The Unschool Mambo' to start me off since investigating homeschooling is really developing your own vision of what education means. That seems like a good idea no matter what we decide about school.

August 20, 2004

crazy abundance dreams

So since I've been pregnant, I've had a recurring dream type that's really fun but is a little embarrassing. They're abundance dreams and the only thing that happens over and over is that I aquire a whole heaping lot of material things and have lots of friends (some from the distant past- like high school, and others from the present). I've been given truck loads full of furniture, clothes, toys, and on and on, and people really want me to have stuff, I'm not even trying. It's embarrassing because it's all mine and everybody loves me. But in the dreams I'm not feeling greedy or desirous of having things, the dreams just start with me getting all these things and I'm so happy and just sort of skip through the whole experience enjoying myself. Last night I had a whole parade of people come to a potluck and file past me saying loving things to me and then I opened a restaurant with a bunch of friends but I didn't have to do very much (maybe I had done the cooking previously, but not in this dream) but just enjoy it and smile at people. Then I was sitting around with the kitchen crew (with an ENORMOUS amount of food sitting out in those big metal food containers, covering every horizontal surface) and they had all just adopted a bunch of dogs that kept growing in number the more I looked around, and one of them ended up being a little girl they had adopted, but of course, she loved me the best. And as I left, I saw that one of my friends had decorated the front of the restaurant with shelves and shelves jam-packed with funky old instruments and memorabilia, some of it Baha'i stuff, some souveneirs from traveling around the world.

So that's a sample of the stuff and popularity I get in my pregnant dreams. I was talking it over with some people at game night and it reminded me that my favorite name for a girl is Theresa (I even named my first car Theresa, a beautiful hulking 1972 Pontiac Phoenix that Grandma Moutrie gave me) and Theresa means 'reaper', you know like a harvester, which is exactly what keeps happening in these dreams- I just keep harvesting and harvesting. Seems like an auspicious beginning for a person, so small still but attracting so many blessings in my dreams.

August 16, 2004

thank you baby

I woke up singing a version of this I learned at Louhelen in my head because it was one of the last things that happened in a crazy pregnancy dream last night. And I felt really grateful to be left with that as a wake up thought, especially since it made me feel grateful for other things. I mostly felt it as thanks for my sweet baby, three and a half inches long, looking very human now, living a hidden life inside me, almost still a secret, even after people know she's there. Geez, it makes me cry. Love to everybody today.

August 15, 2004

I have three children

I've tried two times to post about my first midwife appointment so far, but each time, Maya gets irritated with me for not paying enough attention to her and comes up and hits the Escape key and instantly erases all of what I've written. 'Escape mommy, from the non-Maya clutches of that machine! Here, I'll rescue you!' Uh, thanks dear, but some kind of help is the kind of help we all can do without. (Who all knows where that line comes from?) Right now I'm the only one in the house, so I think I'm safe this time.

Everything went fine (at the appointment) and we got to hear the baby's heartbeat. It was 152 bpm which I think is kind of average- I can't really remember from last time. She (my default pronoun for babies) was really squirrely running away from the microphone for a while before she got caught in a corner and Ray (the midwife) said, 'The baby's being uncooperative. It must be a boy' to which Billy intoned 'We can learn!'. I didn't laugh because then we wouldn't hear the baby, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Now that we know that everything is ok, I can continue my plan of trying to be really calm and peaceful (in hopes that she will be too). They set my due date at February 27th officially. I can't wait to meet her! I love my baby so much already.

Maya was pretty apprehensive about me going to the 'doctor' and Georgia wanted to know everything that was happening, so we all trooped through the three parts of the first appointment (nurse interview, midwife check up and pap smear, lab tests). Maya looked worried for a while, but we had an angelic nurse who brought them snacks, and she was really interested in all the weird things that were happening to mommy. Georgia whispered to me after we heard the heartbeat to ask if there was more than one baby in there, and Ray confirmed that there was only one.

In other news, we had a great game night here Wedensday that Billy organized where our neighbors and Billy's coworkers and Liz, Nate and Husayn did some really hilarious charades and drawings playing Cranium. We've seen very little of Georgia this week, since cousin fun is still to be had, and Maya's really freaked out by her absence, but we'll go back to normal in a couple days. Then Georgia starts school on the 23rd. Hmmm.. we're going to have to find something that's just for Maya to do in the mornings when Georgia's at school. She'll go stir crazy here without her favorite person.

August 10, 2004

the elusive cousins picture

At the request of several grandparents, we finally got all the Baker cousins together for a picture. The last time we did that, Maya, Mathew, and Amy weren't born yet. This picture was taken in front of the Baha'i Center in Urbana at Heidi and David's going away potluck.

August 09, 2004

Georgia doing her thing

Georgia willingly and excitedly performed on stage for the first time at Heartland. Her class did 'the boy who cried wolf' and the kids were all wolves that 'ate' the cardboard sheep. It was really cute. And I was so impressed at Georgia's lack of self-conciousness or fear. She had good teachers that were all members of a study circle that was doing whichever Ruhi book teaches you to teach children's classes. They were very organized and had fun projects and songs and lots of playdough and a great student to teacher ratio, as you can see in the following picture.

Georgia had her last ballet class Saturday. We thought there would be some kind of performance but there wasn't. Oh well. Here are some pictures of class instead.

August 05, 2004

Blood-thirsty Warlords

I think my all-day nausea is clearing up a bit. I say that cautiously because I don't want the nausea monster to hear me and think I am challenging it to a battle of the wills, as we have been engaged in the last month or so. I've used every Jedi mind trick I know of to battle this formidable foe. My favorite is inspired by Suzanne- to just be so excited to be having a baby that even the nausea is diminished in comparison to that excitement to be just a reminder that I'm really pregnant. That turns nausea monster into a one inch high whiner. I've also used going out to movies to good advantage- the nausea monster can not even enter the movie theatre- I get instant and total relief until I step out into the parking lot, where it's lurking under the car. Sometimes I just give in, stop obsessing about eating the exact right thing at the exact right time, and say: alright nausea monster, I accept that you are here. Go ahead, do your thing. I know why you're here and I'm glad for that. Sometimes laughing helps, sometimes singing- maybe the vibrations calm my stomach. And always apples, apples, apples, apples- especially organic Granny Smiths get me through the roughest patches. They are nausea monster poison.

My first good day was last Thursday, the first day of Heartland Baha'i School, providentially (I should really capitalize that because it was a gift from God). I ran the nursery and Billy was not able to get off work, so I had both kids there and the nursery to run. Providentially, again, the only little person in the nursery was Maya until the weekend, when Billy joined me for back-up. The cafeteria food made me sick again by the end of the trip, but Billy was there to take over, so it all worked out fine.

Today I actually took my two and Nadine and Mariah (who are in town for two weeks while their parents are visiting Bolivia) to Curtis Orchard and had a great time! We did everything you can do there and spent a record three hours-mostly jumping from the hayloft (them, not me).

Intense seasonal allergies have moved into me from the neck up, by the way, since the nausea is down, but I don't care a bit. Bring it on pollen! Do your worst, I don't care. I've faced the nausea monster and won.

P.S. Blood-thirsty Warlords is a game that Mikey W. and David B. and I think Nate H. made up (I'm not sure if that's all accurate, so please forgive me gentlemen). It involves those little domino-like pieces that you usually use to build really big intricate patterns and then you knock one over and it knocks down the whole pattern one at a time, you know what I mean. So to play the game, each person builds a fortress of these bricks with a 'flag', which is a different colored brick, hidden inside. Then everyone takes turns flicking bricks at each other's fortresses, trying to knock them down, and when your flag hits the ground, you've lost to a blood-thirsty warlord. It takes some finger strength and a good fortress plan, but mostly it's just an excuse to flick little bricks around the room- and it gets pretty exciting when they go astray.